Ka Wai Ola: Volume 76, Fall 2021

KA WAI OLA

Volume 76 Fall 2021

2 • KWO

KWO • 3

Editors’ Note

2022 marks the third year since the pandemic flipped the world upside down.

And with our grand civilization being as resilient as it is, we’re persevering through the chaos. Institutions of science and democracy have largely triumphed over the forces that threatened to tear them asunder.

As gates of a new year swing upon us, let 2022 shine as a glorious beacon of newfound convictions and desires.

Let it elegantly bring forth realized ambitions and fulfilled promises.

Let it stand regally as a turning point of hope and faith.

But dear reader, as you grasp this magazine that was so carefully made by our dedicated staff in the previous year, let it also be an anchor of remembrance for the milestones of our past.

For Ka Wai Ola, this past year has truly been of an unprecedented significance.

In a case scarcely heard of, a brilliantly talented sophomore has swiftly elevated herself through the ranks to helm the magazine – a good sign for the next three years to come.

Records have been shattered as a staggering group of thirteen layout editors have enlisted to our cause, working tightly together through the world wide web to delicately hand-craft this magazine with the utmost care and diligence – our ranks have seldom been stronger.

So let us rejoice in the past, and reflect on both the serene weather and stormy tides alike that we have dredged through to reach where we are today.

We pray you enjoy this collection you hold in your hands, crisp and lucid yet filled with intricate complexity nonetheless. A memento to keep the past’s beauty alive in your hearts as you embark on this new year.

Table of Contents Writing

Promises

A Love That Tastes Like Home Paean to Place

Mika Hiroi ’24 Camryn Adams ’24 Nicole Dao ’23

Home

Anna Lauren

Proud

Mika Hiroi ’24

Lerner ’22

14-16 20 22 24 26-28

Ars Poetica

Nicole Dao ’23

哎，愛

Yzelle Messinger ’23 哎 38 •

2AM REM Where Two Worlds Join A Sunday Night on the City Bus Stop Dance With Me Tired Trapped Growing Pains Ambience

Nicole Dao ’23 Mika Hiroi ’24

36 40 46-49

Shalita Areeyaphan ’22 52-54 Mika Hiroi ’24

Eden Crisler ’23 Crow Villanueva ’25 Emily Daehler ’23 Anonymous Colby Kurasaki ’24

56-57 58 62-63 66-69 70 72

Uncut Apple

Yzelle Messinger ’23

Stolen Youth

Grace Chang ’24

80-81

Yzelle Messinger ’23

88-89

The Lights Are Not All on Upstairs Butterfly Crumble

Mika Hiroi ’24

76 84-85

Table of Contents Art

Morning Express Harvest Birds The House by the Canal Grow Duck Diving Fields Waikīkī At Sunset Morning Express Listen Relic of an Empire Peak Grapevine

Silvia Kim ’23 Samantha Sumstine ’22 Camryn Adams ’24 Zoe Beccaria Chou ’22 Maddy Hodge ’23 Maddy Hodge ’23 Maddy Hodge ’23 Silvia Kim ’23 Maddy Hodge ’23 Leah McEvoy ’23 Maddy Hodge ’23 Leah McEvoy ’23

Red-Tailed Tropicbird Emma Crago ’24 Chick Drank Red Bull?

Do You See It? Divided Stories 16:29 earth | water | air Alpine River Valley Before the Lost Decade Fearless Flying

Kaylyn Fukunaga ’24 Maddy Hodge ’23 Colby Kurasaki ’24 Leo Kim ’22 Leah McEvoy ’23 Leah McEvoy ’23 Leo Kim ’22 Camden Luke ’25

Cover 10-11 12-13 17 18-19 21 23 25 29 30-31 32 33 34 35 37 39 41 42-43 44-45 50-51 55

Art

Red-Tailed Tropicbird Childhood Innocence Tear Me to Pieces Eye Heart Giveitback Madness of Gotham The Teddy Bear Imprisoned feed me seymour All Consuming Creatures of Habit Valley of the Dragon All Consuming

Emma Crago ’24 Leo Kim ’22 Yzelle Messinger ’23 Yzelle Messinger ’23 Yzelle Messinger ’23 Zoe Beccaria Chou ’22 Anna Lauren Lerner ’22 Camryn Adams ’24 Yzelle Messinger ’23 Leah McEvoy ’23 Ian Watanabe ’23 Holly Chong-Gangl ’24 Leo Kim ’22 Ian Watanabe ’23

59 60-61 64 65 71 73 74-75 77 78-79 82-83 86 87 90 Back Cover

Harvest Birds

Acrylic Painting | Samantha Sumstine ’22

10 • KWO

KWO • 11

The House by the Canal Painting | Camryn Adams ’24 12 • KWO

KWO • 13

Promises

Mika Hiroi ’24 Each day, I see news broadcasts which read like dystopian fantasies – a jagged history.

Lists of the dead and pictures; pictures alive with heavy sorrow.

Alive in the way their subjects will never again be.

Pictures of people whose lives slipped out from in between their grasping fingers.

No – Their lives did not slip.

They were stolen by angry hands, which gleamed like steel and fire.

And among the faces, whose souls were robbed, there is always one which looks like mine.

My face, which looks like my mother’s, who came to this country when she was a girl, younger than I am now, when her mother uprooted her life of cherry blossoms, taking her family to a land balanced on the foundation of hope and promises.

14 • KWO

This land, which is built on promises.

Because promises are what best hide fear.

Because promises are what best create power.

Because promises are what best clean blood off the pavement.

Promises, which sometimes conceal the faces of citizens whose burgled souls flash by on the news.

These faces, which look almost like a mirror in which I see a reflection of our collective pain.

I dream of people like me, whose bodies are pushed and pinned, pulled and pressed: The grinding grievances of people who have no choice.

And when the sun rises in the morning, I promise I see beauty and not: the shadows of nightfall on the sidewalk.

Sidewalks where people are twisted until they can’t breathe.

But sidewalks are not only a place of hands in pockets, dark hair hidden in hats, and eyes on me.

Smooth Sailing

I’ve seen feet firm on the pavement.

I’ve seen fists in the air, united and calling Photography | Maddy

Hodge ’23

KWO • 15

to freedom.

I’ve seen roads, filled corner to corner, with people who I thought had no choice, who were forever trapped beneath the layers of lies, which are what best hold a country at bay.

Now I see them–us– break free and fight for what was once promised to all, but only granted to some.

Instead of being beaten red, black, and blue, we fight for what we should have been born with.

Because we deserve it.

We don’t deserve to be made helpless and hiding.

We fight for what we need: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, a fair chance and equal rights, love and hope and wide smiles.

With our chins held high, we will promise ourselves that we will walk into the future, a future which we will make ourselves.

A future we will make beautiful.

16 • KWO

Grow

Digital Art | Zoe Beccaria Chou ’22 KWO • 17

Duck Diving

Photography | Maddy Hodge ’23

18 • KWO

KWO • 19

A Love That Tastes Like Home Camryn Adams ’24

My fingers chop the vegetables so fine, His empty bowl awaits my bibimbap My love infuses the food on which we dine My thoughts reflect upon the foods I chop The spicy kimchi gives the dish some heat A little spice to keep our passion strong The pickled vegetables are sour-sweet Like when we fight and fix the things gone wrong The bulgogi so savory and right, Like relishing the special times we share The rice that fills the bowl is bland and white, It comforts us to know it’s always there I take a bite, my mind begins to roam I’m reminded of love that tastes like home

20 • KWO

Fields

Photography | Maddy Hodge ’23

KWO • 21

Paean to Place Nicole Dao ’23

After Lorine Niedecker Soon the air will whisper the Name of the sea Cooling in the night and Chafing between palms

A prayer

Here the waves that brought Mother back to faded sea

Glass shores bone-white

Coral sun-bleached shells Water weight my

Sisters and I dig holes to Our flaws left to the care

Of the moon Jump on

The falling castles In eyes like open sores This where we are born to twilight

Many times over The ocean turns

Away like a sword

Into its sheath Softly falling against itself Gilded crests breaking and Sliding

22 • KWO

Back to fullness

bury

salt

Waikīkī At Sunset

Photography | Maddy Hodge ’23

KWO • 23

Home

Anna Lauren Lerner ’22 In The gritty sound of used-up, worn-out graffite scraping paper, Slanted letters on the verge of slipping – Black of charcoal filling a page, darker, darker – Flashing shades of pink and black and grey when stage lights linger satin slippers Ivory buttercream swiped across a child’s cheek Velvet touch Pinch of tarragon, fleck of salt, cackle of burning butter whiff of hearth I am home.

24 • KWO

Morning Express

Digital Art | Silvia Kim ’23

KWO • 25

Proud

Miki Hiroi ’24 Hearing the harsh honks of horns alongside the alcohol-tinged shouts of people clinging to their cardboard signs and their waistbands, in the stifling heat of June, casts a spotlight for the most lovely smiles to break over my lips, which are not painted the glossy red adorning the other girls passing by.

A warm haze of yellow, the citrusy, amber orange glow of fireflies in a jar, starts in the pit of my stomach and rises to put a shining coat of pride on my face as I meander down the street.

Most times, it’s hard to be proud of who I am when parts of me are only seen through eyes which slant to glance at the grass, which looks greener on their side, and lips which press into straight lines or stutter over the difficult words which define me.

But in this month, in the city, in this time, when I am allowed to 26 • KWO

come out and into myself, I can laugh, and cry, unafraid, knowing that there are people who feel the same as I do.

Ambling through sky-high buildings, my gaze caresses flags that say we will hold our backs firmer than the laws against us.

Rainbow flags which ripple in the wind.

Which are not boxed away in the backs of closets, folded tightly, until only the stripe of deep blue is visible.

At my feet, far below the flags: A chalk sketch of a thousand colors trails down the sidewalk.

I know the grinding footsteps of the crowds will pound it away, like how: -The shrieking aimed at unnatural sinners -The sickly sheen of metallic purple spray paint, the clamorous jeering at the fags -And silent parents who Don’t have to express their shame KWO • 27

Pound at my temples.

But still, I skirt around that gorgeous display like it’s sacred.

28 • KWO

Listen

Photography | Maddy Hodge ’23

KWO • 29

Relic of an Empire

Photography | Leah McEvoy ’23

Magic

Ink | Mila Becker ’21 30 • KWO

KWO • 31

Peak

Photography | Maddy Hodge ’23

Magic

Ink | Mila Becker ’21 32 • KWO

Grapevine

Photography | Leah McEvoy ’23 KWO • 33

Red-Tailed Tropicbird Chick

Photography | Emma Crago ’24

34 • KWO

DrankReflection Red Bull?

Drawing | Kaylyn Fukunaga ’24 Photography | Maddy Hodge ’23

KWO • 35

Ars Poetica Nicole Dao ’23

You are tearing apart these lines See also: me tearing up the beds of my fingernails See also: the dog rooting through the dirty, papery flower beds. Find your meaning elsewhere.

36 • KWO

Do You See It?

Photography | Maddy Hodge ’23

KWO • 37

哎，愛

Yzelle Messinger ’23 I have two tongues One growing restless from disuse Hesitating and clumsy My other doesn’t have to think much Words don’t have much meaning Other than the wailing sound, like an old widow Ai, ai, ai When “I love you” Seems thin Like broth you fed me When I was sick, and I was grateful But you were just doing your duty 愛, What you never told me But I can say for you, Without hesitation, with my beating heart that resides, Sheltered in the center of the character itself 我愛你。

38 • KWO

Divided Stories

Photography | Colby Kurasaki ’24

KWO • 39

2AM REM

Nicole Dao ’23 sometimes i see your name not in

the LED lights of my phone, but fluorescent ones; the ones in drug stores at 2AM

(and what comes next is the part that scares me) this is where i go to get toilet paper soda pop

the ampersand to fit our names together. i will carve 天長 into the aisles, and you will write 地久 on the popcorn, stucco ceiling, and we will pretend to know what these words mean: the sky is long the earth is long

(but in two different ways, yes?) one is for describing the space between us—the other describing time between us. but for now, know this: no matter how far back in the past, we are still living.

40 • KWO

16:29

Photography | Leo Kim ’22

KWO • 41

earth | water | air

Photography | Leah McEvoy ’23

42 • KWO

Urban Buddha

Photography | Leo Kim ’22

KWO • 43

Alpine River Valley

Photography | Leah McEvoy ’23

44 • KWO

Reflection

Photography | Maddy Hodge ’23

KWO • 45

Where Two Worlds Join Mika Hiroi ’24

There is a line down my center, cleaving me in half. From it, there sprouts two separate beings, severed from each other. Where they once met as a single human is a gushing wound, dripping agonizingly with the shredded scarlet of torn flesh. Every time one side acts without the other, I feel this separation as an ache. Each side is as different as Jekyll from Hyde, though neither is evil, and it is seldom easy to tell which one is speaking. One winces when she is told that she is too pale, and the other shudders when people jeer, pulling their eyes at her.

Both hide behind a smile, white teeth standing out against olive skin.

When faced with those dreaded check boxes, fitted with a label, there is never one easy option, so they always choose “Mixed,” which both describes them and does not at all.

Shifting eyes can easily pick out my oddities, because half and half means that the whole is muddied. My mother poured the half which brought squinting eyes, and kimonos twisting down my body like a river. My father tipped in the half swimming with freckles, and white, red, and blue. Where the two halves sloshed together, swirling in my mother’s swelling belly: a child of white and yellow, of dollars and yen, of barbeque and sushi, of tradition and hard work and the place where two worlds join. There is a desperate longing in me to be more than somewhere in the middle of two labels, but I am not enough of my mother or father to fit into either of their worlds.

Scooped into pillowy bosoms, my knees knocking against impossibly long legs, I see the faces of my father’s family break into smiles. One half of me shrinks behind the other, tucking away the tongue which dances around foreign words. I recall, as a child, putting my tanned arms against my aunt’s, laughing about how different they were. It was a rosy, humorous thing, the contrast between paper pale and darker skin, but looking back on it only sets a prickling of unease in my blood, knowing how, even then, I had to see myself from the outside.

46 • KWO

I wish I was still oblivious to the stares I get, walking down the street with my aunt. I can read narrowed eyes and raised brows, as gazes hotter than raked coals slide over her crimson hair, onto my nearly black braids, then come to rest on our interlocked fingers. When her neighbors approach us hesitantly, I know their question before they ask it, predicting how their voice will trail up and off half way through.

“Is this your….?” They’ll smile expectantly through the shuddering silence.

“My niece, Micheal’s daughter,” my aunt will reply, and they will hide their surprise by listing off the things on my body which are his.

Like a flag pushed triumphantly into war torn land, they claim my features for him. The tell tale smattering of freckles, my wide smile, and my crooked nose, though if my mother was standing beside me, they’d see that my nose is a mirror image of hers, just like my black hair. The abundance of it breaks the chopsticks holding it in a bun, so it falls loose around my shoulders, where giggling black and white classmates run fingers through it, because it must feel different from their own bouncing locks.

My mother’s side of the family knows that black hair is not something to be marveled over. It is just hair, to be brushed straight and adorned with delicate cherry blossoms for pictures. Once, when my hair consented to be pulled behind my head in a bun, my grandmother squinted at me, her eyes tracing my jawline, rounder than hers or my mother’s without my curtain of hair to slim it down.

“You’re looking like your Auntie Laura like this.” She tilted her head, eyebrows drawing together. “With hair up and glasses.”

“Really?” I laughed incredulously.

“Your face, that’s why,” she replied, before turning back to chop vegetables for dinner and adding nonchalantly, “Laura is bigger one, right? You be careful what you eating. Don’t want to be big like your daddy’s family.”

Smooth Sailing

Photography | Maddy Hodge ’23

KWO • 47

Speaking English, my grandparents have a thick accent, tugging on all their words. If it was just me, they would jabber in their own language, unencumbered, but for the benefit of my sister, they switch to the language of this land, which wraps around their tongue, making their words halting and hesitant. They make sacrifices because of our whiteness, like how on New Year’s, they added beef to the dark red boxes of traditional dishes, to make it more palatable for us. I did not tell them that I wanted only to immerse myself in the culture of the land they left behind. When they introduced themselves to my grandmother, they used their English names, which sounded foreign coming from their lips. I did not tell them that those were names of people I had never known.

They do not tell me the stories behind their birth names, Yoshimi and Yoshifumi. I know, locked away behind the English ones they’ve adopted, there is a life in those names. One which would tell a tale of crossing the sea to start a life in a place which glowed with new beginnings, but when they speak of the past, they only ever start from when they arrived in this bloated country of so many colors, but somehow only white.

A woman I know has two names, as my grandparents do, but somewhere in the choppy waves of the ocean between here and there, she dropped her first one away, and I never heard it. In our meandering conversations, she speaks of how, in the place she was born, all the girls want big chests and double lidded eyes. She wishes she could give her daughter these things, if only so that her child did not have to grow up with the snarling insecurities that she did. I want to tell her that she should not worry, that the world will see how she is perfect, and that her children will not be spit at or frowned upon for the way their eyes fold, but we both know that I would be lying. So, I do not give voice to the words, and we just have to make do with knowing, somewhere deep inside of us, that we are not wrong for being us, with hair that flows like water and eyes that pinch shut at the ends.

Smooth Sailing

Photography | Maddy Hodge ’23 48 • KWO

When I speak to her, I can still feel my two halves, but without pain. We talk of how it is to live in a place where we do not look like we belong, we talk of how we do belong, we talk of food and love, of nothing and everything. I do not hide away one side of me, because she has not learned to expect one or the other.

She sees me with dark eyes and freckles and does not wonder who they came from. With skin yellow like corn on the cob on Fourth of July, with a voice singing in two languages, I am. There are two sides of me, but they are learning to hold hands.

Smooth Sailing

Photography | Maddy Hodge ’23

KWO • 49

Before the Lost Decade Photography | Leo Kim’22

Magic

Ink | Mila Becker ’21 50 • KWO

KWO • 51

A Sunday Night on the City Bus Shalita Areeyaphan ’22

A Caucasian man and an Asian immigrant with her child boarded the Route 4 city bus on a Sunday night at precisely 7:59 P.M., each one wanting to go home for very different reasons. The man, who worked in retail, had had a long and tiring day at work, dealing with belligerent customers who insisted that the items they wanted to return were well within the 30-day return policy. If he had to listen to another person say once more that they’d like to speak to the manager, he’d swear to god he’d leave behind his stupid employee name tag and his sickeningly polite customer service attitude and never look back.

The immigrant mother and her child, who was seven years old and going on eight, were going to make hot pot that night, and they had just come back from the Asian supermarket from across town, the only one whose spices and milk tea actually tasted like home. The both of them were seated in the row behind the man whose head was leaning on the smudged window, talking animatedly in their native language about all the fish tofu they were going to devour, if they should buy more noodles next time, whether there was enough leftover meat for tomorrow, and a bunch of other things that sounded extremely nonsensical to the man.

With each word that came from the family seated behind him, the man grew increasingly annoyed. There was a customer earlier that day too, a stout Chinese woman in her mid-60s whose face seemed to be made of wrinkled paper, with watery eyes that scrutinized every object and person within her vicinity, and a demeanor that suggested that she was not leaving the store until she could return the clearly used tablecloth she had bought the week prior. While she did not ask for the manager, the man assumed that she wouldn’t know how to tell that to him even if she tried.

The conversation that was going on behind him reminded him so distinctly of the rude and nitpicky old woman and the obviously foreign accent that accompanied the woman’s barely functioning English.

52 • KWO

To him, it was like listening to a DVD that had stopped working a long time ago; every single word bled into the others even if they had completely different pronunciations and tones.

He was beginning to feel his sanity slipping away. The bus driver had hit another bump in the road, causing the bus to rock about dangerously like a malfunctioning rollercoaster, much to the man’s irritation. If he wasn’t so tired, he would have stood up in his seat and asked the driver where in the world he learned to drive like that. The sound of rustling plastic was seemingly amplified, and it felt like someone had stuck their hand into his brain and jostled everything in there. Even more overpowering and nauseating was the scent of herbs, basil to be exact, and it was tickling the inside of his nose in an uncomfortable way. Now that he had a splitting headache and lost his grip on reality, he did the only rational thing his brain seemed to come up with at the time.

Before he understood what he was doing, he had turned around sharply in his seat, looked straight into the wide eyes of the child and her mother, and grabbed the bag full of spices, meat, and vegetables, and hurled it directly out of the only open window in the entire bus. The sound of the bag hitting the ground was covered by the loud whirring of the bus, but he didn’t need to see or hear it hit the ground for an eerie smile to form on his face. He felt an odd sense of satisfaction as he replayed the moment in his head, reimagining the way the bag seemed to fly itself out the window and into oncoming traffic.

High on this feeling, he stood up abruptly in his seat and began to hurl words that even he couldn’t make sense of at the woman. When he finally came to, the woman had a shocked and bewildered expression on her face, her mouth agape in an almost comical “O,” but what really brought the man to his senses was the tear-streaked face of the child, a look of understanding in her wide black eyes at the horrible words that came out of this pale stranger’s mouth.

If you were to talk to the man today about what happened that Sunday night, he’d swear up and down that the person who repeatedly told the woman to “go back to China” and “eat her bok choy somewhere else” was not him. He would insist that he didn’t KWO • 53

know what came over him. He would blame it on his exhaustion that day, on his sleep-deprived state and the accumulating stress from work. He’d blame it on his boss, his coworkers, his customers, and the bus driver. Anybody but himself. As much as he said that he was sorry for his actions, those words never reached the ears of the woman and her child, who never got to have their hot pot that night, and instead had to order the whitewashed Chinese takeout from across the street. Again, he would emphasize that he was not racist, thank you very much. After all, his neighbors were Chinese, so how could he possibly be racist?

For the record, his neighbors were actually Vietnamese, and the woman and her child moved to the land of the free from Japan.

54 • KWO

Fearless Flying

Photography | Camden Luke ’25

KWO • 55

Stop

Mika Hiroi ’24

The girl’s knuckles whitened as they gripped the handle above her. She swayed to the motion of the subway, leaning like a reed in the wind. Warm bodies fidgeted all around, taking up space in the way that only humans know how. The girl breathed shallow, her shoulders hunched and head down, not wanting to be faced with the sparks of awkwardness induced by making physical contact with others. She kept to herself, following the unspoken code of conduct always in play when surrounded by strangers.

An automated voice crackled over the intercom, lifting the girl’s gaze from the ground. Silver doors hissed open before her, inviting her to escape the stench and pulsing heat of the cramped subway car. On hasty feet, she propelled herself out, walking behind the crowd of people flooding into the subway station. She tread in the footsteps of a thin, elderly woman, whose feet dragged under creaking knees. The old woman held a large, brown bag of groceries, glossy stalks of green onions poking out from the top.

The woman’s brightly patterned, scarlet skirt brushed the ground. A silky white crane was stitched seamlessly into the fabric, its extended neck curling around the woman’s legs, as if curious.

Her garb was a shocking contrast to the rest of the dreary station, which was drowned in grays and browns. Hoards of faded blue jeans and dull t-shirts blended together, but this woman stood out like blood splotches on pavement.

The trailing skirt caught beneath a passerby’s blocky black shoe and the woman’s feet faltered. As she lurched forward, several bottles of spices tumbled from where they had been perched at the top of her bag. They rolled across the floor, between the hasty feet of the crowd. With a hand pressed to her lower back, the woman bent, vainly stretching to retrieve the skittering bottles. She staggered, her knobby knuckles knocking accidentally against fast moving ankles, but never touching her spices.

Silently, without meeting her eyes, the girl bent down, picked up the smooth bottles, and returned them to the woman’s 56 • KWO

gaze darted away from the woman’s gaze, the girl could see a large, grateful smile break out, spreading deep creases across the woman’s lightly bronzed skin. The woman said something quickly in a language, which was definitely not English, but saw that the girl did not understand.

“Thank you, young girl!” she said, a foreign lilt pushing at each syllable.

The girl did not see the dark eyes which smiled with the words, for the woman had bent at the waist, dipping into a deep bow. She said a few more words in her native language before turning. However, she had hardly gotten three steps away before she was stopped again. A burly figure rushed at her, arms outstretched. The girl’s eyes tracked this figure, eyes narrowing. A bystander beside her followed her gaze and whipped out a cell phone.

The smart phone’s camera observed the figure’s movements as it lunged to push over the woman in the vibrant red skirt. The crane on the skirt fluttered weakly in distress as the woman toppled. After the woman hit the ground with a thud, her groceries scattering all around, the figure spat in her direction and raced away.

The girl dropped her chin to her chest and let her hair fall in front of her face. She watched through her lashes as the others in the station simply walked past as if nothing had happened, looking anywhere but at the feeble form laying on the floor. Though bottles of dark red and yellow spices rolled under their toes, they moved quickly on.

“Can’t believe I caught that on video!” The person next to the girl elbowed her lightly, eyebrows raised in shock. “Look!”

The girl did not look at the screen shoved under her nose. When the person holding the phone realized she was not watching, they scoffed and departed, crushing a green onion stalk with their heavy tread.

Nausea stirred in the girl’s gut. No one reached to offer the woman aid and no one deigned to spare a second glance. And since nobody stepped forward, the girl could not bring herself to be the first and only one. Wincing, she felt the crunch of green onions under her shoes.

KWO • 57

Dance With Me Eden Crisler ’23

dance with me, my grand old friend once before you go one last fabled memory who knows what happens down below underneath the earth and soil above the empty breadth in the small space in between the room next door to death you tell stories of blurred memories things i could only dream to know grasping at strands of consciousness graying eyes fall aglow let’s have one last tangled waltz before i dance alone a final, short-lived promenade until i dance all on my own dance with me, my little friend first before you grow the forming of a memory happiness is all you know your spirit shall protect you from the antipathy of truth until the day will come along when existence cracks your youth fractures in your outer shell materiality drips in the truth of our existence seeping through your skin you shall live as if you never broke until your wounds are sewn just you wait until the day you dance all on your own 58 • KWO

Red-Tailed Tropicbird

Photography | Emma Crago ’24

KWO • 59

Childhood Innocence Photography | Leo Kim’22

Magic

Ink | Mila Becker ’21 60 • KWO

KWO • 61

Tired

Crow Villanueva ’25 Far from the gentle lulls of sleepiness A violent, demanding reality meets the tired Bones poured from concrete Skin shaped from lead Eyelids steel traps slamming shut Over watery eyes Every footstep a mile Every breath taken through a plastic sheet Every thought clouded, Held hostage, By her The wrath, Far from the kindness, Of sleep A two-faced woman, sleep is In the eyes of the sleepy Her arms a soft blanket, Her hands a caring embrace She whispers, Sings, Laughs Her voice laden with ambrosia and sweet nectars, Filling the heads with divine dreams The adoring love of the living and the dead Sleep; a caring lover, a supportive friend A mere moment in her embrace Is proof enough that there is a god And that they are caring enough To promise such a mercy, Of a little slice of death, At the end of every day.

62 • KWO

But two faces is not one And in the eyes of the tired, The illusion comes undone Her arms weighted chains Her hands now claws She screams, Yells, Begs, Her voice laden with saccharin and lies Filling heads with an addiction, An addiction of her The demanding love of the living and the dead Sleep; a cruel lover, a backstabbing friend A mere moment in her embrace Is proof enough that there is a god And that they are cruel enough To promise such a mercy, Of a little slice of death, And take it away every morning.

KWO • 63

Tear Me to Pieces

Sketch | Yzelle Messinger ’23

64 • KWO

Eye

Sketch | Yzelle Messinger ’23

Am I helping

Digital Art | Lucas Omidyar ’21 KWO • 65

Trapped

Emily Daehler ’23

“Mama, your smile in this photo is so fake,” she giggled playfully, waving around a discolored picture a friend took decades ago of me sporting a stethoscope.

“It’s not fake.”

“Yes, it is.”

I widened my mouth, displaying a full set of pearly whites, three front teeth instead of two. “Fay, it’s late, go to bed, you have to wake up early to go to school tomorrow,” I said.

She stopped twirling around but, instead of heading to bed, she took a couple froggy leaps across the room and body slammed onto my bed, crawling under my blanket. Her head rested on my shoulder.

“I’m not tired yet,” she complained, her hands out in front as she examined her miniature-sized nails. “Tell me a story, please, one story.”

I wasn’t in the mood for a temper tantrum at ten o’clock at night so I began to piece together in my mind the famous Chinese folk tale about the monkey god. I hadn’t heard the story since I was a little girl living in Taiwan, much less had anyone to tell it to.

The details were blurry, the events of the story lost like the corner pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Fay tilted her head up to the ceiling and let out a long sigh. “Once upon a time…” rolled off my tongue.

“No. Not that story. I want to hear a real story” “What?”

“Your story,” she said as she pointed at the picture that plopped neatly on her lap. The photo reminded me of just another uneventful day. I thought about how I had stood up and concentrated on not tripping as I walked across the stage to put on my white coat. It was a monotonous, waste of time ceremony, required by the university. But still everyone seemed to be attentive, and every now and then glanced at their parents for glimpses of much-desired approval. “My story is not a happy one,” I tried to explain.

“It’s okay Mama. Sad stories make me sleepy,” she whispered. Her breathing began to slow from earlier.

“I am the oldest of all my siblings, ten in total but I’m the 66 • KWO

only one who’s adopted,”I murmured. The cicadas outside the window singing songs of the night distracted Fay from the pause of silence in my story.

The memory of my incompetent biological parents handing me off to a family in exchange for a couple of chickens became painfully evident in my mind. I was purchased to take care of my now brothers and sisters, to make money for the family, to cook, and to clean. I tried not to ever think about it as my heart ached for the realization of how worthless and unwanted I was.

“Growing up they treated me as well as they could,” I slowly explained. “I felt a sense of responsibility, so I paid for all their school, took them to their doctors’ appointments, and had to drop out of school.”

“Huh?” Fay looked at me, eyes wide, her eyebrows raised.

High school. Not university. They aren’t the same thing. I had heard so many life-changing stories about, of the opportunity, that it was the place where dreams came true, so for once in my life I was selfish and made the decision to go try for university there,” I told her. “Once I arrived in California, I couldn’t eat anything for days because I hadn’t realized that different currency was used.”

It seemed strange telling Fay about my own experience. It wasn’t something she could relate to and yet, she wasn’t fidgeting or looking around. I could tell she was interested. “Why did you stop?” she asked. “Keep going, Mama.”

“I went to university in California, then medical school.”

“You said there was a sad part, what’s the sad part?”

“I lived by myself in a one-bedroom apartment in New York City; my family was thousands of miles away, no one even in the country.”

I could not bring myself to tell Fay, but for a long time I cried myself to exhaustion, letting my tears drain my energy, lying in bed every night. The numbness of the aftermath was the one thing I looked forward to. The streets of New York were crowded with men in suits shuffling to work and children crowding around donut shops, but I couldn’t have been more alone. I could not find a cure. No patients at the hospital or even the puppies who came for the terminally ill children could put a real smile on my face. I felt so insecure in my new life, a hollow hole in my body, like I had lost something. I tried to tell myself that this was the dream KWO • 67

and I was finally the person the little girl in me had wished to be.

I was a doctor, in the best city in the world, yet I was living in a nightmare.

Fay twiddled her thumbs. “If you were homesick, why didn’t you just go home?” she grumbled.

I answered quickly. “I did all the time. But every time I returned to Taiwan, it became harder to leave,” I added. “I once even had a panic attack in the Taipei airport because I could not bring myself to board...it hurt too much to leave.”

“Mama, you should’ve stayed, then.”

Tonight was unusual. With each counting minute in the night, the laughter of cicadas became more and more prominent.

It was disturbing how loud they were growing to be so I stood up, crawled out of bed, and turned on the fan in hopes of drowning out the noise.

“I couldn’t because there was no one else to pay for all my siblings’ university tuition,” I said as I increased the speed of the fan using a remote control. “Doctorate degrees don’t transfer from country to country so I would not have been able to make money at home.”

“What’s a doctorate degree?”

“Never mind.” The muffled commotion from beyond the window screen sounded like the laughter of my sisters after I had helped them successfully bake their first cake for their grandparents. It was one of those memories I wish I could go back and relive. I shuddered, as a different dreadful memory came alive.

“One of my sisters got into a motorbike accident on the way home from work and her brain was severely damaged,” I told her, paused briefly, and then continued. “I was the person that was supposed to make all the medical decisions for her because I was the most experienced doctor in the family.”

I remember getting a call from the hospital in my home village. I caught the first flight out of the United States to Taiwan, but by the time I arrived, which was almost 24 hours later, she had died. The doctors had taken too long to decide what course of treatment was best. Everyone had told me that it was not my fault, that it wouldn’t have changed the outcome. But I blamed myself. The guilt consumed me. I lay awake at night wondering what could have happened if I had gotten there faster.

68 • KWO

“And so after going to her funeral, I came back to the United States and went back to my old routine,” I stated.

Fay’s head was completely still on my shoulder. I could feel the corner of her eye fluttering on my shirt. “My life here in the United States wasn’t better than it was back home. It wasn’t all that everyone said it was,” I told her, stroking her thick brown hair.

The room was beginning to cool down from the increased circulation. “I had realized that leaving my family, friends, and home was not worth it.”

“So were you still sad when you went back to New York after the funeral?” Fay asked politely.

I felt my eyes fog. A layer of saltwater formed on my eyes.

I croaked, “Yes, I was so sad I could not function.”

I had always told everyone that I was just homesick, but that was just a cloak for what I really felt. I was living a completely separate life from my family, left out, and isolated. I was running around a labyrinth desperately trying to find a way out of a position I had put myself in.

There was no good way to escape my own choices I was imprisoned in. I spent my free time imagining the chuckling, the friendly exchange between cousins, the clinking of chopsticks, and the smell of incense burning during family gatherings.

All my favorite holidays were not celebrated in the United States. Growing up it had taken a long time for me to feel a sense of belonging and within years it had all washed away.

“Um, why do we live here and not there then?” Fay mumbled. She yawned so wide I thought her jaw would snap as she snuggled closer into me.

“I feared that I would be rejected out of society and that I would be treated differently,” I said. I blinked and a singular tear rolled down my cheek. “Then while I was pregnant with you, the tension between Taiwan and China got really bad so no one knew what was going to happen.”

“You stayed here for me?”

“I will do anything for you.”

“Are you still sad?”

“No, I have you now.” Fay drifted off to sleep, while I stared out the window into the bright crescent moon at what could’ve been.

KWO • 69

Growing Pains Anonymous

There is a pain on my left side and it won’t go away my mother says it’s growing pains but I think there is something wrong with me I think we should call a doctor my mom is a doctor she says nothing is wrong I say my stomach hurts she says what happened to your left side I say it all hurts everywhere please make it stop she says who do you think I am I say a doctor And what will I do when she is gone Can you die from a broken heart my mother says no my doctor says no I say what do you know about love Go crack her chest only to stitch it back again and call it healing Go take out the parts that no longer serve her go call an ambulance because her appendix has burst why was it even there in the first place when did it ever serve her when all it was meant to do was burst Mom it hurts there is a pain in my chest Surgery can’t help her there is something wrong with her brain Mom my heart burst mom please these growing pains are going to kill me why was my body made to die mom mommy I want you to crack my chest open I need you to take out the things that hurt I need to take out the thing that burst And when she’s gone I will tell my Doctor I have growing pains And he will tell me to grow up.

70 • KWO

Heart

Sketch | Yzelle Messinger ’23

Am I helping

Digital Art | Lucas Omidyar ’21 KWO • 71

Ambience

Colby Kurasaki ’24 Dark figures covered the sky Sudden claps of thunder boomed and died Scents of rain lingered nearby

72 • KWO

Giveitback

Drawing | Zoe Beccaria Chou ’22

KWO • 73

Madness of Gotham

Photography | Anna Lauren Lerner ’22

74 • KWO

KWO • 75

Uncut Apple

Yzelle Messinger ’23 An apple cuts evenly into six pieces Four for you, and two for me, because I can’t eat much tonight You cut the apple for us With a kitchen knife I try to be indifferent As the knife makes a sound Against the wooden board We don’t talk much, never did When I was younger, I didn’t eat the skin of apples.

Instead, we would have slices of fruit in a bowl With salt water sprinkled, Reminding me of the ocean on my sore feet I am told that I am part of a family, uncut Undivided I don’t believe you I let someone else hold me close, but I realize that They are not real So I imagine red apples, Cut into six slices

76 • KWO

The Teddy Bear

Drawing | Camryn Adams ’24

KWO • 77

Imprisoned

Drawing | Yzelle Messinger ’23

78 • KWO

KWO • 79

Stolen Youth Grace Chang ’24

I was never struck by my own exhaustion until I found time to rest. Broken breaths resonated across the vacant dock and the splintered wood beams bent and shook under my weight. Water and sky were a single coalesced blur and the once-polished port, which in summer held consolement, had conceded its joviality to the dire potency of battle. Carmine stained my palms, and the moon, at night, looked like the whites of your eyes.

I thought back to yesterday: the air was yet to be marked by smoke, death was an inconceivable fear, and your skin still held a familiar warmth. I spared a glance at you, your profile holding my gaze. The collective years had truly impressed on you an observable density—a heaviness that accompanied hands blistered from recoil and the sporadic grey peppering your hair. You were a child, one in a battalion, and you carried the weight of a hundred wars and lived through a number equal.

I remember how you were always running; the cobble of Berlin was surely imprinted with your leather soles, tavern windows painted with the warm fog of your breath, scribbles of your name written with gaunt fingers on the weathered glass. As we passed newsstands, my feet would follow your shadow. Tracing your outline, I tried to commit every detail, every flaw into my mind. The rough cloth of your fatigues swallowed you whole. Haughty women laden with talcum and perfumes ambled past, their plump legs moving to the chime of the church bells. Cigarette miasma wafted into your face, your cough breaking the near-silent morning, and our laughter rang out to the edges of Unter Den Linden. With each day, I felt that time with you was never enough; on the field, I could only wish for the hour to pass, for today to have never come.

When the first bullet shot, your face fell still, movements orchestrated by men in white collars while you started checking ammunition, crawling in trenches that grew deeper 80 • KWO

with motion and listening for the clop of the cavalry, waiting for bullets to graze your head and aiming through your narrow scope, praying that the next blood spilled would not be yours because bleeding meant losing.

And then, with a flash and gunpowder amid metal-clash and marsh uniforms, your world was now a muted lull. The terrain was ghost-quiet, except for the dull thud of your body meeting a stewed cherry ground, a brass shell falling. Blood rushed forth like scarlet water from a fissured dam.

It froze me, to see the relief written on your face, your eyes fluttering shut and chin to the sky as if awaiting the clouds to part, the cupped hands of a divine presence reaching down to carry us all to kinder lands.

If you were alive, would you have lived through the next war? Gained back the pilfered years and stolen youth?

Would you have found a greater solace anywhere on earth other than in death? If you were here, would this lake in which our clothes still hang drying bring you both ease and sorrow as it does to me? And as the night’s end begets a new sun, I hear you in the finch’s song, flying from oak to oak; I see you in the glimmer of the water, shining like liquid light.

I am not sure from where you are watching, but I know I will meet you again. And you know that my hand will always feel empty without the weight of yours.

KWO • 81

feed me seymour

Photography | Leah McEvoy ’23

82 • KWO

KWO • 83

The Lights Are Not All on Upstairs Mika Hiroi ’24

The girl in blue may sound senseless when she looks through her rosy lenses Seeing things that we do not seeing things her mind has wrought.

But in the white-walled, padded room, she can smell the sweet perfume of skyhigh flowers smiling down And chimney smoke from a small town.

She paints silver keys with sidewalk chalk and braids freedom in her golden locks entreating us to look far closer, and escape into a world that chose her.

She wears a twisting crown of dreams, which fills with wonder and snaps at the seams.

84 • KWO

But her whispers of Elysian peace wither when her echoes cease.

We frown, for her lips jabber as she walks round and round.

We reach out to stop her and she laughs, a broken sound.

Leaning in, she conspires, “Please, look through my eyes” The light winks, a key turns in the lock.

We think we ought to try.

Smooth Sailing

Photography | Maddy Hodge ’23

KWO • 85

All Consuming Digital Art | Ian Watanabe ’23

86 • KWO

Creatures of Habit

Digital Art | Holly Chong-Gangl ’24

KWO • 87

Butterfly Crumble Yzelle Messinger ’23 Don’t you know that Your hot tongues Cannot hurt me Don’t you know That I’ve learned To hold my heart Gently In my clammy hands It flutters briefly, Tries to escape

Like a paper butterfly Fragile, easily torn With these wings I fly Like Icarus once did I convince myself That these flames’ curled tongues do not Cannot Lick this butterfly’s wing This is what I tell myself Monster, Monster You tell me that this is what I am, what I am bred to be, all that I could ever be But I don’t believe what you say, I don’t believe you I don’t, but my butterfly cannot escape my handmade prison.

88 • KWO

Do I Offend you?

My butterfly beats its Wings Against the tessellation Of my interlaced fingers.

Butterflies do not like to be trapped.

Your voices fall quiet Idle, waiting To encapture me with calloused hands I might as well sing with them Since It does not take long For a butterfly wing To crumble.

Remember I am not a forgiving daughter.

KWO • 89

Valley of the Dragon Photography | Leo Kim ’22

90 • KWO

Writers’ Statements Anna Lauren Lerner ’22, Home (24) I had written this poem back in freshman year when I was taking Poetry & Drama and Visual Storytelling. We (my classmates and I) would spend hours in quiet darkness, hunched over illuminated charcoal sketches. When I wrote this poem I felt incredibly grateful to be living such a beautiful, magical life. A life full of art and sketches, poetry and passionate essays, dancing through the night on the Blaisdell stage, and New York Times-inspired dishes... joy, warmth, intellect, accomplishment, and love. The core aspects of who I am and that which makes me most alive are reflected in this poem.

Shalita Areeyaphan ’22, A Sunday Night on the City Bus (52-54) I wrote this piece during my Creative Writing class in Block 5 of junior year. Around this time, our class was working together to write a group poem to address the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, which ultimately inspired this writing piece. As an Asian-American myself, anti-Asian sentiment is something that obviously affects me. This piece served as a way for me to convey my thoughts on this issue and to demonstrate how easily this can happen anywhere, at any time.

KWO • 91

Eden Crisler ’23, Dance With Me (56-57) When I wrote this poem, I wanted to reflect on the gradual loss of innocence as you grow up. The concept of death and growing up was always scary to me, and I wanted to use this poem as a way to show the awe I feel at the wisdom of the older generation and their experiences, as well as the innocence and purity we experience as children.

Crow Villanueva ’25, Tired (58) I wrote this poem for my English class, responding to the prompt of describing an emotion. I later used this piece as the inspiration for a significantly longer poem of mine, “The Baroque Dreams of a Terminally Queer Teen.” While writing the longer poem, I fell in love with this work again, and at the encouragement of my English teacher, I submitted it. As everything in this poem makes obvious, I wrote it while I was very, very tired. Due to the intensity and depravity of my want for sleep, I choose to equate it to lust in this poem, personifying the concept of sleep as a woman; then later in the poem, to highlight the common cruelty of being tired even after waking, I chose to take that personification and spin it to be that of a cruel lover. Through this poem, I wished to express both faces of the all-consuming maddening state of being tired, the feeling we all know most intimately.

92 • KWO

Anonymous, Growing Pains (66-69) I wrote this piece after getting home from school one day. I really just sat down at my computer, and just started writing the things I felt. For some reason I had a pain in my side, so I just started there and the rest came very easily. It was an interesting experience for me, because I often feel that writing poems for me has been a very structured, well thought out process, whereas this seemed to just flow out of my mouth.

Colby Kurasaki ’24, Ambience (72) I thought of this haiku during a Chemistry Honors quiz as I was waiting for my teacher to collect papers. I looked out the window and saw the gloomy weather overshadowing Punahou’s campus.

When the class finished, I walked outside and could smell the sweet scents of the rain. This haiku offered a way to understand the chain reactions that sudden changes cause in everyday life.

KWO • 93

Artists’ Statements Samantha Sumstine ’22, Harvest Birds (10-11) This piece is inspired by nature in Ohio. My great aunt lives there in a home tucked away in the lush woods of an old community with gas pumps, custard stands, well water, and countryside fence lining every road. Every morning, I remember peering through her attic window and spotting a dash of red or blue speckled within the trees in her yard. These birds would meet me at eye-level with both of us being high above the ground. I hope to have captured these creatures’ timeless beauty through this piece. This was one of the hardest paintings for me to complete, as I kept going back and tweaking every detail in an attempt to make it more colorful, textured, and detailed. This painting resides in Ohio now –framed in a tiny wooden frame, settled in my great aunt’s home.

Camryn Adams ’24, The House by the Canal (12-13) When my art teacher first announced that we would be working on this huge perspective art project, I was quite nervous. I’ll admit that perspective wasn’t at the top of my list of art skills to master because I was afraid I’d work so hard only to find out that I made one minor mistake which caused a whole butterfly effect to happen across my paper. However, I did my best and stepped forward with my best work and am pleased to say that I’m very proud of this piece. It was inspired by a cute neighborhood I observed in Japan when I vacationed there with my family one summer.

94 • KWO

Silvia Kim ’23, Morning Express (25) The inspiration for this piece came from the beautiful Switzerland tour trains. I was captivated by how they whisked the rider away to charming landscapes. I incorporated the train in my drawing accordingly and hoped to similarly whisk away the viewer into a world of my own. As for the loose, painterly style, I started with big and general shapes instead of using a sketch. Then I refined the shapes for details. When developing large illustrations, it is important to start with a strong visual idea of the finished piece to ensure the elements work together. I also used warm, sunny colors to recreate the fresh morning air and a bustling city.

Leah McEvoy ’23, Relic of an Empire (30-31) This is a small fountain in Rome. The image of a cracked, crying statue in what was once the epicenter of one of the most powerful empires in human history spoke to me. The photo is obviously a coincidence; however, it paints a stifling narrative about the passage of time.

Leah McEvoy ’23, Grapevine (33) There is not much to say about this photo. This grapevine was growing in a small garden right next to a popular lookout. I like random stills of interesting things, and it was the only vine there, so I thought I could get a good photo of it. I settled on a more zoomed-out photo because I liked the contrast of the focused grapes and the blurred leaf in the foreground.

KWO • 95

Emma Crago ’24, Red Tailed Tropicbird Chick and Red Tailed Tropicbird (34, 59) When I took these photos, I initially had no intention of photographing Red-Tailed Tropicbirds. I was out by the Hālona Blowhole Lookout, near the Japanese Fishing Shrine, photographing an Inca Tern that had been spotted there. As I was sitting on the rocky outcrop, Red-Tailed Tropicbirds were swooping low over my head, allowing me to get up-close shots. Later on, Eric Vanderwerf, a renowned ornithologist, pointed out the nests to me, and I was able to get a shot of the Tropicbird chick.

Colby Kurasaki ’24, Divided Stories (39) This photo was taken the day before my departure flight back to Honolulu, Hawaii. As I was walking through Pike Place Market in Seattle, I saw a ton of urban art that was displayed all over the city.

So why did posters on an alley wall near the gum wall stick out to me? I was fascinated at how the sun’s rays lit up half of the wall’s “stories,” but left the other half’s “stories” in the bleak darkness.

The angle at which this photo was captured gave off the message that everything, even posters of a wall in Seattle, has two contrasting stories.

Leah McEvoy ’23, earth | water | air (42-43) This is from a plane ride over the Alps. I hadn’t been paying attention, and by the time I noticed the break in the clouds, I barely had the chance to take this photo without capturing the wing. I found it interesting that it is quite clearly a mountain range, yet the snow and clouds almost give the appearance of breaking waves.

96 • KWO

Leah McEvoy ’23, Alpine River Valley (44-45) I took this photo on a plane ride from Munich to Rome. For much of the flight, there was complete cloud cover below us, so I was unable to see much of the landscape. This was one of the first breaks in the clouds that I saw, and I experimented with several angles and fields of vision before settling on this one where the mountains faded into the clouds.

Camden Luke ’25, Fearless Flying (55) I took this picture on the third day of doing photography. My friend was really good at this trick. He can go really fast and high every time. One thing that is really challenging about taking photos of people skating is that they go really fast. It took about three tries to get this picture and I was really happy with the results.

Anna Lauren Lerner ’22, Madness of Gotham (75-76) I took this photograph on an art trip over the summer to NYC with Punahou, accompanied by Dr. Ball, Mr. Pascucci, and my classmates. We were clustered, wandering over the Brooklyn Bridge with bicycles whizzing by, horns blaring, and music playing far off in the distance when I snapped this shot. This shot captured the frenetic and vigorous dark beauty of Gotham.

Camryn Adams ’24, The Teddy Bear (77) I have a teddy bear in my room. To this day, he remains unnamed but he has always offered me great comfort whenever I’m afraid.

During art class, we were doing still-life charcoal pieces and after searching my room for an object of inspiration, I decided on my teddy bear. Thus, this is how the artwork was born. I think my teddy bear would be pleased to know that he was the face of one of my artworks.

KWO • 97

Leah McEvoy ’23, feed me seymour (82-83) When I first saw this rose, I saw it as elegant and beautiful. It was the only one on the bush, and that just seemed to make it more special. However, when others compared it to a mouth, or a maw more specifically, I could not unsee it. I was torn between an image of elegance and one about the darkness within beauty. Satisfying absolutely no one but myself, I instead named the photo a humorous musical reference.

Ian Watanabe ’24, All-Consuming (86) This piece could have multiple interpretations. Maybe this is a metaphor for grief. Maybe this depicts the promise of “true love” as a cruel trap for the idealistic. Maybe there is no metaphor and a dude is just getting nommed by a REALLY big fish. I’ll let you decide.

98 • KWO

KWO • 99

Editorial Staff

Editors-in-Chief

Bagrationi Writing & Management

Mika Hiroi ’24

Qing Art & Administration

Leo Kim ’22

Osman Advisors

Anjoli Roy Jill Sprott

Bourbon Layout Editors

Lorelei Inaba ’22 Mattie Morales ’22 Kristen Abe ’23 Nicole Dao ’23 Kira Goode ’23 Silvia Kim ’23 Anya Latham ’23 Joy Leung ’23 Sophia Hurd ’24 Koko Leong ’24 Ava Pakravan ’24 Kyla Nakashima ’25 Zoei Peacock ’25

Habsburg Submission Editors

Ian Watanabe ’23 Ava Pakravan ’24

100 • KWO

Romanov Staffers

Aiya Bettinger ’22 Taylor Jenkins ’22 Anna Lerner ’22 Ashley Oh ’22 Etienne Salle ’22 Isabel Cheever ’23 Chayden Eli ’23 Yzelle Messinger ’23 Aria Saines ’23 Callie Umeda ’23 Harley Wolters ’23 Brynn Chang-Kanoa ’24 Kensington Ono ’24 Kainalu Wong ’24 Noelani Brennan ’25 Ash Bu ’25 Jovie Okamoto ’25 Sydni Pang ’25 Issac Verbrugge ’25

KWO • 101

102 • KWO

The mission of Ka Wai Ola is to share the original writing and artwork of Punahou students with a larger community.

Would you like to see your work published in the upcoming issue? Please send your art and writing pieces to kawaiola@punahou.edu for a chance to be featured in the next issue!

KWO • 103

104 • KWO